King Of Pops’ Unconventional Popsicle Path To Success

Atlanta natives might be familiar with 15-year-old popsicle brand King of Pops, but outside of the Southeast, it has not yet become a household name. That might be changing.

Despite its relatively low name recognition nationally, the brand is steadily building its wholesale and cart franchise business after divesting its refrigerated distribution company, Perfect 10 Foods (P10), to Rainforest Distribution in January.

The decision to offload its largely successful regional distribution company was based more on focusing on King of Pops’ core mission of community-building than a financial necessity, said CEO and co-founder Steven Carse.

“We were a popsicle company that wanted to be a popsicle company and started a distribution business,” he said. “It started to feel we were a distribution company that had a little popsicle business, which wasn’t where we wanted to be.”

Founded in 2010 by Carse and his brother Nick, King of Pops started as a handmade popsicle company in the Atlanta metro area. To service its growing cohort of popsicle carts and retail partners, the company launched P10 Foods. What started as a means to an end grew with more local and regional brands seeing cost savings working with P10.

“It was a unique, non-savvy business,” Carse said. “A lot of these bigger distributors have exclusives, clauses and contracts, and we thought we will beat these guys with no frills. We built it based on reputation.”

The name derived from a desire to only distribute 10 “perfect” brands so the arm of the business would not “snowball” where it dominated the business. When P10 sold to Rainforest, it had a “couple hundred brands” in its portfolio, but kept to the same ethos of “no chargebacks” or other hidden costs that would hinder smaller food and beverage brands.

Steaz, New Primal, Saint James Tea and Nightingale Ice Cream Sandwiches are just a few of the many brands listed on P10’s website.

Pre-pandemic, King of Pops had about 300 employees, operated its own popsicle production facility and was deploying its pushcarts to about 100 events per weekend. When COVID hit, the company put everything on pause as in-person events shut down.

Once things began to reopen, the company began getting calls to rent carts for small events like birthday parties or weddings. The franchising of King of Pops carts to a wider geographical area became the focus of the company with the serendipitous opportunity to sell its distribution arm.

The give-and-take of the deal allowed Rainforest to go deeper in Georgia and the Southeast, while King of Pops offloaded a piece of the business it was not as interested in continuing. The deal also brought a new opportunity to the popsicle business’s potential growth.

A key provision of P10’s sale was an agreement that Rainforest would service King of Pops franchise partners and open the business to new regions in its much-larger distribution footprint.

“Most distribution companies aren’t excited to pull up to a garage in a suburban neighborhood with a refrigerated truck, but that was part of our deal, and it’s given us a pretty nice reach,” Carse said.

King of Pops has begun expanding its retail and wholesale business and is eyeing new franchise territories further north and west, including Washington, D.C., Texas, and Colorado, Carse said. The company currently has about 75 cart franchise territories.

With renewed focus on its core mission, King of Pops can grow its consumer base by tapping into brand-building opportunities like its collaboration with Natalie’s Orchid Island Juice Company on a LTO Sweet Greens popsicle.

While the distribution arm generated a lot of revenue, it was not as profitable for King of Pops, Carse said. More importantly for him, P10 took resources and time away from doing what he likes best about his business: Connecting with communities by making and selling popsicles.

“Sometimes I think I want to take King of Pops to the moon — big offices, big strategy, big deals,” Carse wrote recently in a LinkedIn post. “Then I find myself in the kitchen with my brother before sunrise… on the road to Asheville and Greenville, slinging pops, and racking up windshield time lugging around my trusty cart.

“When I’m in those moments of doing the actual work it usually becomes very clear. This is it. This is what it is all about. Life’s pretty simple. We’re the ones who make it complicated.”